He attended Maryville College and Yale University before his graduate education at Yale was interrupted by World War II, where he served in the Pacific Theater in the Army Air Corps as an intelligence officer documenting the war effort.
After the end of the war, Pflanze worked for the State Department and was in the Berlin Airlift accompanying the delivery of supplies in 1948, before finally resuming his graduate studies at Yale.
Considered to be a popular Modern German History Professor by many of his students, peers, and colleagues, Pflanze often included slides, maps, and other visual aids into his lectures and teaching.
He won the McKnight Foundation Award for Bismarck and the Development of Germany, Volume I in 1963.
[5] Pflanze won the Einhard Prize in 1999 for Bismarck, Der Reichskanzler Volumes I & II, (C.H.